The invention relates to limited rotation motors such as galvanometers, and particularly relates to limited rotation motors used to drive optical elements such as mirrors for the purpose of guiding light beams in scanners.
Limited rotation motors generally include stepper motors and constant velocity motors. Certain stepper motors are well suited for applications requiring high speed and high duty cycle sawtooth scanning at large scan angles. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,275,319 discloses an optical scanning device for raster scanning applications.
Limited rotation motors for certain applications, however, require the rotor to move between two positions with a precise and constant velocity rather than by stepping and settling in a sawtooth fashion. Such applications require that the time needed to reach the constant velocity be as short as possible and that the amount of error in the achieved velocity be as small as possible. Constant velocity motors generally provide a higher torque constant and typically include a rotor and drive circuitry for causing the rotor to rotate about a central axis, as well as a position transducer, e.g., a tachometer or a position sensor, and a feedback circuit coupled to the transducer that permits the rotor to be driven by the drive circuitry responsive to an input signal and a feedback signal. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,632 discloses a conventional two-pole limited rotation motor.
A requirement of a desired limited rotation motor for certain applications is a system that is capable of changing the angular position of a load such as a mirror from angle A to angle B, with angles A and B both within the range of angular motion of the scanner, and both defined arbitrarily precisely, in an arbitrarily short time while maintaining a desired linearity of velocity within an arbitrarily small error. Both the minimum time of response of this system and the minimum velocity error are dominated by the effective bandwidth of the system. The bandwidth of the system is the concatenation of the servo amplifier bandwidth with that of the scanner.
For example, such limited rotation motors may be used in a variety of laser scanning applications, such as high speed surface metrology. Further laser processing applications include laser welding (for example high speed spot welding), surface treatment, cutting, drilling, marking, trimming, laser repair, rapid prototyping, forming microstructures, or forming dense arrays of nanostructures on various materials.
The processing speeds of such systems are typically limited by one of more of mirror speed, X-Y stage speed, material interaction and material thermal time constants, the layout of target material and regions to be processed, and software performance. Generally, in applications where one or more of mirror speed, position accuracy, and settling time are factors which limit performance, any significant improvement in scanning system bandwidth may translate into immediate throughput improvements.
There is a need, therefore, for an improved limited rotation motor system, and more particularly, there is a need for a rotor for a limited rotation motor that provides improved bandwidth.